Archive for July, 2011

July 25, 2011 Monday, it rained, we needed it. There was a sunrise, and it was raining. Later notes from others said there was a double rainbow.
Came home and did some garden work and prepared for the talk on Tuesday.

While on the phone talking to Sara, a mother deer and a fawn was walking next door in the back field. Its the first time we have seen the deers in awhile. There has been evidence of them being around since the beans on the three sisters plantings are missing. While the mother deer was eating two red fox came out and decided to run around the deer and the tree.

July 26, 2011 Tuesday, I gave a talk at the Oak St Garden on Growing Garlic. Kevin assisted and it was a great time with handouts, hands on demo’s of a full garlic bulb, great audience participation with questions and some field work to show how to harvest the garlic.

We have a La Hoya plant hat has never flowered until this year. We have one flower head on it, with serveral small ones starting. It is beautiful, and the flowers look wax like in appearance. A wonderful smell.

July 27, 2011 Wednesday, we went to Roblin to pick up the CSA share then off to the Napanee Food Bank Garden to weed our rows, 6, 7 (Peas) and 26 (Beans). Well the peas were done , and the beans only needed watering. There were a few weeds but not a lot.

Coming home and going through the gardens, we have found our first ripe tomatoes. These are the red Eros tomatoes midsize and sweet.

We do have some tomatoes with blossom end rot, and and leaves that are showing early blight. These were also noted at the Napanee garden.

Thursday- Went out this morning to see the sunrise and the layer of mist in the meadow, and the crescent moon in clouds.

Later today there is a RASC meeting late in the day, and I look forward to what the rest of the day has to offer.

It is the small things in life that give you greatest pleasure, seize the day and enjoy every moment.

Kim spent another 6 hours early Saturday morning to complete the garlic harvest. Good thing too as we are in for two days of rain today and tomorrow.
Each type of garlic was dug/pulled out and brought over to a worktable where the dirt was cleaned off and a couple of layers were peeled off. They were put into the drying racks and each section was labelled as to type and number.
We have 4 drying racks standing inside a leanto with decent airflow, protection from direct sunlight and rain. Give them a month or so to dry and they will be ready to go for grading to select the seed for the fall planting in October.

This was our 4th week since we were assigned rows 6,7 and 26 to look after in the Napanee Food Bank Garden.
These images are from our week 4 visit (on Thursday July 21) and we plan to take image each week and post them here as a historic record accessible to all.

Some of the other things we noticed this week: Two rows were covered in Remi cloth.. not sure what was underneath them!
And 3 of our large buckets have disappeared. This effectively doubled the time it took to water as we would normally fill up two at a time and walk them over to the rows. “Where have all the buckets gone?” (sung to the tune of ….)
A very few tomatos are turning red and getting ready to go.

Some of the garlic was ready to harvest, showing some of the lower leaves turning brown and dying off.
So we started a little bit of harvest, cleaned them up, and hung them up to dry outdoors in the leanto. This gives them a dry place out of the sun with a good bit of breeze to help them dry slowly (over a month of so).

The plan is to harvest a few types every evening and finishing off perhaps this weekend.
We seem to have so many bulbs this year that a 4th drying stand may have to be built!

This was our 3rd week since we were assigned rows 6,7 and 26 to look after in the Napanee Food Bank Garden.
These images are from our week 3 visit (on Wednesday July 13) and we plan to take image each week and post them here as a historic record accessible to all.

Some of the other things we noticed this week:
Some of the plants had been dusted with something that looked like white or grey ash but was not ash:

This week, despite thunderstorms rolling through the area earlier in the morning, the ground was quite dry and watering was needed.
Watering is done the old fashioned way… by hand with lots of buckets. We find that 5 buckets will do a 50′ row.

It is with a sad heart that we took the robodome to its home today. We are very disappointed that we were unable to make the entire system work as the project was intended, ie a complete remotely accessible telescope for the members of the RASC Kingston Centre.

The telescope, superwedge, widefield adapter and camera all headed back some months back, when it was too cold to disassemble the robodome itself.
It came off the platform quite easily and we gave it a good washing to get rid of a few years of accumulated grunge.

Last tuesday we plunged ahead with a project that has been on the books for a few years now… insulating the north wall of the greenhouse.
We use the greenhouse in the early spring when the temperature drops below zero. We typically use plastic over the growing wraps forming a tent with an electric space heater inside. Most of the heat tends to vanish out of the building as it is simply 2×4 construction and 1/2 plywood walls.

A couple years ago we insulated and added a flat floor and that made it more comfortable inside, mainly from a safety perspective (don’t trip on uneven floor anymore).

So we emptied and dismounted everything on the north wall, including the mouse nest, cleaned it up and insulated with R3 styrofoam insulation and added a layer of 3/8″ plywood on top of that.

After the wall was done we rearranged the cupboards and work surfaces into something that should work better:

Lastly we built some more shelving to store regularly used items and laid down the rubber flooring squares again.
New screening was added to the floor vents, 3 sections of pegboard went up to organize tools, a new IKEA shelf was assembled and installed.
Done in one day. Total cost of the project was about $150

Once we see how this behaves in the early spring we will see about adding the next phase of insulating the east wall.
This has also eliminated a lot of potential mouse nesting space, which is always good. We had 8 mousetraps in the greenhouse and none of them tripped for some weeks now. We thought we were mouseless.

Whenever you set up a new data collection system, it is necessary to verify or calibrate it against some other standard to make sure that it is actually working.
Yesterday we had our second major confirmation that the system is picking up solar events by comparing them to another radio telescope system.

Two higher resolution images of the 2nd event at 20:10 and the 3rd event at 20:25 UT from The Hawk’s Nest Radio Astronomy Observatory of Jim Brown is near Industry Pennsylvania USA

You can see the double peak event on the 20:10UT event as well as the matching curve shape of the 20:25UT event.

20:25UT was 16:25 EDT or 15:25 EST which puts the sun 3:25 hours past approximate transit (varying by longitude) which at 15 degrees/hour is approx 50 degrees west of south. This means the dipole sensitivity lobe is quite broad… at least 100 degrees of azimuth around due south (where it is aimed).

This was our 2nd week since we were assigned rows 6,7 and 26 to look after in the Napanee Food Bank Garden. This is the Garden’s 2nd year and all in all last year went very well.
This year the rows are spread apart more allowing for the rototiller to to the major work in between the rows for weeding. Much appreciated!

These images are from our week 2 visit (on Wednesday July 6) and we plan to take image each week and post them here as a historic record accessible to all.

This is a raised (for pressure) water container with the beginnings of a drip feed system for the tomatos. It doesn’t appear to be complete yet. The tomatos are individually staked with 2×2’s and tied up with plastic ties.

The water tap system works well but needs to be moved from tank to tank as they run dry as we have only one.

Watering is done the old fashioned way… by hand with lots of buckets. We find that 4 or 5 buckets will do a 50′ row.

This week, despite thunderstorms rolling through the area Wednesday, the ground was quite dry and watering was needed.

Well its Canada Day (2011), and a beautiful morning indeed. Remember those men and women who have passed on in all our wars on far away soils, they fought for our and others freedom. Remember those who passed away at Beaumont Hamel. We got to celebrate Canada Day and participate in the memorial service in St. John’s NFLD (2004) and it was a wonderful experience.

Today, we will be with friends for a BBQ and Fireworks, but first an update on the gardens.

On Tuesday, we noticed in the parsnip that is going to seed, the parsnip caterpillar, which was cocooning and eating all the seeds devastating the plant. They were quickly taken care of.

Potato bugs are still showing up on the potatoes, and on the tomatoes. The cucumbers, squash are growing nicely. The carrots, onions, peas, beans, peppers, radishes growing nicely. The lettuce, radish, mesulix, beets, cabbage, spinach are going to seed, everything on course.

Today, we put more dirt into the potatoes in order to give them a covering hill, and weed the gardens.

On Monday and Wednesday we were doing weed pulling, and picking potato bugs at the Food Bank Garden in Napanee. They have the space, and have 5 ft clearance between rows, very nice.